European Jewish Congress: Norway cartoon may be hate crime

The European Jewish Congress is considering taking legal action against a Norwegian newspaper over a cartoon that the Simon Wiesenthal Center has said would "make Hitler and Himmler weep tears of joy," and which the EJC said may amount to hate-crime.

"The European Jewish Congress is carefully considering the possibility of taking legal action over a cartoon in Dagbladet, one of Norway's leading papers, which depicted circumcision in a blood-thirsty-demonic manner," the EJC said in a press release.

The EJC said the caricature, which showed police looking on as a man in a black hat and coat pierces the head of a bloodied baby with a pitchfork in the name of "tradition," fell outside "the boundaries of freedom of speech," according to European Jewish Congress President Dr. Moshe Kantor.

"We are now studying the possibility that this legally constitutes incitement and even a hate crime and will therefore require legal action," Kantor said.

Kantor accused the cartoonist of utilizing "one by one all the major historical anti-Semitic motifs, the type of which incited attacks and even the mass murder of Jews in the past."

Tomas Drefvelin, in an email to a Norwegian pro-Israel organization, said his intention was not to draw Jews, adding that his point was a "general criticism of religions."